Small Problems
by Alyndra
Summary: Dean is a fraction of his normal size and Sam is not taking it seriously enough. Dean hates witches.


**Notes:** Written for Sketchydean's wonderful art prompt for the SPN Reversebang on LiveJournal. Go see the full piece at "sketchydean. tumblr. com slash post slash 179929463106 slash for-this-years-spn-reversebang-i-worked-with" because it's awesome! Also, thanks so much to Dancing_Adrift for truly heroic betaing! All remaining mistakes are mine.

* * *

It was a Friday afternoon and Sam had finally cleared time to sit down and really crank out his ancient history essay. Brady, his roommate, could be very distracting when they got to talking, but he'd gone to the library to do his own homework, leaving Sam with just his books and blank paper. Sam could write essays on myths and folklore in his sleep, but one of the luxuries he was really enjoying about his first year of college was that he could actually afford the time to do all the reading for his classes, unlike in high school.

Before, he had to study as much and as soon as he could, because he never knew when the next emergency would strike. Unexpected hunts were just the beginning: getting evicted without notice, moving towns and schools, sudden training field trips, or one of them getting stuck recuperating from broken bones. Anything could happen when you were a Winchester, and you had to be prepared for it all.

Sam was loving the fact that he could now expect a quiet weekend at home, with plenty of time to get ahead in his classes and maybe a party with Brady tomorrow night, but certainly nothing that would interrupt him for the next few hours.

Then there was a tap on his window.

Sam frowned. It was probably nothing.

He wrote a few more words determinedly, but then he heard the noise again. Damn. Was his life cursed to never be normal? Sam went to the window to see what it was.

Dean throwing pebbles at his window to get his attention would not have been particularly surprising, even considering it had been six months since he'd walked out on his father and brother in a blowout fight, and that Dean could be anywhere in the country, for all he knew. Dean was unpredictable. Sam knew he could appear at any moment, for reasons clear only to Dean.

No, what surprised Sam was that Dean was actually _standing_ on Sam's windowsill, and that he didn't even come close to filling up the available two inches of ledge.

"Dean!" Sam wasted no time getting the window open. "What's going on? Why are you…"

"Tiny?" Dean asked. He sounded like he did when he was trying to speak as deep and gruff as he could, only it was still coming out high-pitched as a three-year-old. "I hate witches. Don't you dare laugh." He clambered over the windowsill and Sam's salt line without a pause.

Sam bit his lip. He could _try_ not to laugh. "Do you want me to call Dad?" he offered. He could just dial and then let Dean do all the talking.

"No," Dean snapped. "If I wanted to call Dad in for every little problem - shut _up_ , Sam - every problem I had, I'd have climbed a payphone by now. Why'd you have to live on the third floor, anyway? It's stupidly high off the ground," Dean scowled.

Sam ignored the kvetching. "So you'd rather risk me laughing at you than Dad finding out you got yourself shrunk," he concluded. "What did you even do? Nevermind, it doesn't matter. I don't know if I can help you, man. I haven't hunted since I left."

"It's like riding a bike," Dean said, confident as always. "You never lose the knack."

"I thought you said it required constant vigilance and practice," Sam said.

"Both can be true," Dean dismissed airily. Sam thought they sounded pretty contradictory, but he let it go. They had more pressing concerns.

"Dean — I can't drop everything for a hunt anymore," Sam warned. But then he sighed. Dean was prickly about asking for help at the best of times, and so Sam never turned him down if he could help it.

"Who's asking you to?" Dean said quickly. "I just need a place to crash and somebody to grab books for me till I figure out what spell this was and how to undo it, and then I can go kill the witches on my own."

"Great plan," Sam said, rolling his eyes. "But sure. Got any books you want to start with?" He paused. "Is your car okay wherever you parked it, or do you need me to go get it?"

" _Her_ , Sam. Please," Dean sighed ostentatiously. "Keep your hands off the wheel until you can show proper respect."

"Whatever," Sam said. That was Dean-speak for the car being fine where it was. "Modern cars can get 50 miles to the gallon," he added, so Dean wouldn't think he was rolling over too easily.

"Heretic," Dean grumbled, falling into a familiar groove. "They'd crumple into a ball the first time a werewolf thumped its tail at them, too."

It was almost scary how effortlessly they could get back into old, well-worn arguments, like nothing at all had happened between them. But it was a lie; Sam's life was different now, and Dean pretending everything was swell wouldn't make Sam change his mind. He had to make it clear that he had a life outside hunting.

"Okay, are you good for now? I need to get back to working on my essay," Sam said, turning to sit back in his chair.

Dean took a running leap off the windowsill and managed to land on his desk. "I could use some water," he said casually. "Think I sweated everything out of me on the climb up here."

"Ew," Sam said. He got up and found a plastic water bottle, then unscrewed the cap and poured it half-full of water. "How about food - you hungry?" he asked Dean.

"I'm always hungry," Dean said. "But food can wait. I'm shedding body heat like a hummingbird here; you got a scarf or something?"

Sam thought about it. It was California; it never got very cold. He didn't have much in the way of hats, gloves, or scarves, and Dean probably wouldn't think much of his socks or underwear.

"Um, I've got a spare washcloth that's clean?" Sam hazarded.

Dean made a face. "Scratchy, double-wide beach towel?"

"I'll light a candle for you," Sam decided. "I've got plenty of those." He dug a fresh one out of his supplies - it never hurt to keep a few basics on hand, Sam wasn't _stupid_ \- and set it out on his desk next to Dean. "Hope candy-apple's okay," Sam said.

" _You're_ candy-apple," Dean muttered. "How soon do you think you could get your hands on that witchcraft book with all the creepy upside down drawings of human sacrifices?"

"I can think of at least five that fit that description," Sam frowned. "Did you actually see them using it?"

"Yeah, not well, but I'm like ninety percent sure I recognized it," Dean said. "You'd know it, too. Which one are all the college Satanists into these days?"

Sam sighed. "It could be any of them, Dean, witches have lorebooks stretching back a thousand years, at least. And they all want to write their own because the others aren't good enough."

"It had a gross-looking cover," Dean said. "Vellum or human skin."

"That's most of them; it doesn't help narrow it down." Sam knew that Dean knew that, but it was frustratingly little to go off of. "You didn't catch the title?"

Dean shrugged. "Distracted." He grinned. "The witches all thought they had to be naked for some reason."

"Great." Sam rolled his eyes. "Would you even recognize their faces in a crowd?"

"Of course I would, Sam, I'm a professional," Dean said indignantly. "Are you ever going to light this candle or what?"

"Sorry," Sam muttered, fishing out a lighter and flicking it into life. "I can scrounge up a few witchcraft books tomorrow, since it's a Saturday. You can let me know if it's any of those."

"Sounds good," Dean said, holding out his arms to warm himself at the candle. "Meantime, I get to hang out with you. So, what do you usually do around here?"

"Mostly homework," Sam said, sighing over his essay, which he knew perfectly well wasn't going to get written while Dean was hanging around, bored. "My roommate should be back in an hour or two."

"Roommate, huh?" Dean asked, looking around at the dorm room. Two extra-long twin beds, two desks, dressers, and a mini-fridge. Sam's side was near military-clean and bare, but Dean could see signs that his brother was as settled in as he ever got: clothes put away in drawers, go-bag stashed under the bed instead of by the door.

The other side of the room, by contrast, was classic college-boy mess, clothes flung around with abandon and papers overflowing the desk, empty to-go containers adding seasoning to the atmosphere. "You like him?" Dean tried not to sound skeptical.

"Yeah, we get along great," Sam said, trying not to sound defensive. "He's a good friend. I'm not kicking him out for the weekend for you," he added.

"That's fine; a little mental scarring, a change in worldview could be good for the kid," Dean said nonchalantly. "I'm certainly seeing everything from a different perspective, let me tell you. Your nose hairs alone…"

"You can just hide while he's here," Sam hissed at him, covering his nose with a hand. "Jerk!"

"You want to put me in a shoebox the whole time?" Dean arched his eyebrow. "You know, maybe I'd be better off clinging to the outside of the building, hoping a hawk didn't decide I looked appetizing…"

"Are you going to be like this until you're big again?" Sam demanded. "Do I need to go hunt those witches down right now just to make you feel better?"

"Chill, Sammy," Dean sighed, mollified that Sam _would_ hunt witches for him if it came down to it. "I'll behave, and not scare off the locals."

"You're scary as a mouse right now," Sam snorted. "But someone might still scream if they saw you."

"I'm surprised they don't scream at the sight of your hair," Dean grumbled. "Yeti."

"Whatever." Sam ignored the dig. "So… current _little_ problem aside, are you and Dad really doing okay, since I left?"

"Of course we're okay," Dean snorted immediately. "What, you think everything's going to fall apart the second you leave?"

"No, I…" Sam sighed. "Never mind. How about the case you were working, what did the witches do to catch your attention in the first place?"

"They're witches; they stand out like beetles in rice," Dean said, which, when Sam prodded him to unpack a little more, turned out to mean that Dean had tripped over a bad case of acne and a spellbook and followed the rabbit trail to the local coven's super secret ritual orgy.

"So they panicked and cursed you," Sam concluded. "But no signs they were actually ritually sacrificing anybody?"

Dean went a little red. "Well, they had one person all tied up on the altar, but she seemed pretty convinced it was all just a really great way to get laid, so she wouldn't even leave when I cut her free -"

"Did you have the machete?" Sam asked, interested. "Or just a knife?"

"Machete," Dean sighed. "I think I probably scared them."

"Mmhmm," Sam said.

"The book had seriously freaky pictures, Sam!" Dean said. "And then all they wanted to do with it was have weird kinky sex parties?"

"Welcome to college," Sam said.

* * *

Brady lugged his books up the stairs. The library had been crowded, and somebody'd nabbed his study carrel in the time it had taken him to visit the bathroom. But he had the books he'd wanted, anyway, so he decided to head back early.

He could hear Sam's voice as he got close to their dorm. Funny, it sounded like Sam was talking to somebody. It wasn't unheard of for Sam to have friends over, but it was unusual; Brady had fully expected Sam to be studying all night alone.

No sock on the door or other keep-out sign, though. Brady shrugged and opened it wide.

"Shit!" Sam exclaimed, trying to block his desk from Brady's sight with his body.

"What the fuck!" Brady yelled, because Sam was totally failing to hide the fact that there was a little man on Sam's desk.

"Ever heard of knocking?" The tiny man had his arms folded and was glaring at Brady, like Brady was the one…

"I live here!" Brady's voice went unfortunately high-pitched, almost as piping as the little man's. "Who are _you_?"

"Just dropped by for a word with Sammy," the man said, overly casual.

" _Sammy_?" Brady echoed like a dumbass. "Nobody calls him…" He took his eyes off the tiny man with an effort to look at his roommate who was looking hangdog guilty, but totally focused in Brady's direction and not on the miniature person with one foot propped up on his eraser.

Brady took a deep breath because if he didn't he would probably pass out. Or hyperventilate.

Then he took a few more.

"I would tell you that this isn't what it looks like," Sam said with a wan grin, "But I don't think it'd work."

"Does it ever?" Tiny man had sarcasm. Brady stared at him.

He was probably eight or nine inches tall, and skinny, too, not even heavyset like really short people got. If he hunched a little he could probably stand inside a nalgene bottle. He wore rough jeans and leather boots, and Brady wondered how he'd found such modern-looking clothes that fit him so well. They didn't look clumsy like his sister's doll clothes always did.

The man had barely stopped scowling at Brady for a second.

"Sam? You know this guy?" Brady said finally, lost at sea.

"Yeah," Sam sighed. "Brady, meet my brother, Dean."

Brady jerked his eyes over to Sam again, shocked. "Your brother…!" He paused. "Was he always this…?" No wonder he could barely get two words out of Sam about his family, if he'd grown up hiding a freakish miniature human from the public.

"Short?" Sam supplied. "No. This is recent."

"Temporary," the tiny - _Dean_ corrected. "Very temporary."

"Ah - okay," Brady said. "Sure." He couldn't stop staring at Dean, but suddenly it struck him that the way his arms were crossed might not be simple anger, but - "Are you cold?" he blurted.

"No," Dean said, unconvincingly. He shivered.

"Here, this is cashmere," Brady said, pulling off his scarf and dropping it in a puddle on the desk. "You can keep it if you want." The scarf was light grey, soft and fine - just perfect for wrapping around a nine-inch-tall man.

Dean ignored it.

"Thanks, Brady," Sam sighed. "You probably have a lot of questions…"

"Hey, but don't let me interrupt," Brady said. "You don't have your mini-bro drop by every day." He furrowed his brow. "Unless I've just missed seeing him before?"

"No," Dean grunted.

Whatever. The scarf would still be there for him later if he decided to be less cranky.

Brady thought about if being shrunk to model size would make him that grouchy. It probably would. That is, if it didn't send him off in a screaming fit or leave him cowering under a bed.

No, a bed would be too big to cower under. Maybe a motorcycle helmet.

Dean was amazingly calm about this, considering. He and Sam both were.

"Does stuff like this just happen randomly to you?" he burst out.

Sam and Dean exchanged loaded glances. "Uh, it's not really random," Sam said. "Dean kind of... seeks it out."

"Way to make me sound like some kind of kinky gallivanter," Dean snarked at his brother. "I wasn't _trying_ to get shrunk."

"Oh, like 'trying to spy on a witches' orgy' sounds so much better," Sam shot back.

"Witches. Wow, really?" Brady said. "Like, here on campus?"

"No, I hopped a bus across the country like this," Dean said. "Yes, on campus."

"Woah," Brady said. "Dude." He probably sounded like a pothead. Well, right now he felt like one, like his world had just been _blown_. "I'm not sure I want to know."

"You probably don't," Sam said sympathetically. "Sorry to dump all this on you. Hey, how was the library?"

"Full," Brady said automatically. "Did you get your essay…" But then he stopped, because Sam's first sheet of paper was still sitting on the desk, not even half-full. And the reason he hadn't gotten more done was staring him down from that same desk, arms crossed and eyebrow raised skeptically. "Sorry," he winced.

"It's okay," Sam lurched to cover the awkward pause. "I think I got some good ideas for where to go with it, at least…"

"That's good," Brady said numbly. "Um, sorry. I think I just need to maybe sit quietly and process for a while…"

"No, yeah, totally understandable," Sam rushed to assure him. "Take all the time you need."

Brady sat down on his bed across the room and put his head in his hands. He could hear Dean start muttering to his brother and Sam whispering back. Brady didn't try to make it out. He and Sam had been tight since they'd been assigned the same room, and if Sam was a little aggressively normal, well, it didn't quite hide that he wasn't always in sync with all the other college students. He had an air of mystery from being tall, self-possessed, and hardly ever talking about how he grew up. "Oh, all over," he'd say when asked where he was from. "Dad was military, kept us hopping. Midwest, a lot. How about you, where are you from?"

Brady would never have thought anything of the answer, except for how many times he heard it, hanging out with Sam. Sam's casualness started to seem rehearsed, purposeful. Starting vague, a little detail to allay suspicion, then redirecting inquiry - perfect for someone looking to become a lawyer, he supposed.

It made Brady curious. He started asking a few casual questions of his own: "Ever been to Oregon? They have this awesome donut store…" or, "Texas, man, I wonder what it's like…" and no matter where it was, Sam had been there. Brady made a game out of it: as it turned out, Sam had lived everywhere, with the possible exception of Hawai'i. "Really?" Brady had asked, surprised. "I thought Hawai'i had a lot of military stationed there."

"Oh, they do," Sam said breezily. "But the one time it looked like there might be a job for my dad there, somebody else took it on before he could. I was mad," he added. "We're the only schmucks dumb enough to spend three months of winter in an Alaskan wasteland, but going somewhere nice? Oh, no, not us, give that job to the other guy. Dean said it was too long a trip, but I think he just didn't want to leave the car."

This was maybe the longest Sam had ever gone on about his family. Sam's dad had some sort of specialized job. That made sense, with the travelling all over, actually. And his brother, Dean, liked driving — that wasn't much to go on.

It said more about Sam himself, really: that Sam had been bitter about moving so much, that he hadn't thought that most of the places they lived were "nice." Brady knew that Sam had turned up in California for college alone, never called home, and had spent Christmas working double shifts at the local bar and grill.

But suddenly Dean shows up, cursed by _witches_ of all things, and takes up residence on Sam's desk. He'd never guess there was any hint of a falling out from watching them: Sam's shaggy head bent close, listening to Dean, who seemed able to talk a mile a minute without ever losing his aura of 'cool guy.'

Brady shook his head. Witches were real? Well, he knew there were oddballs wandering around talking paganism and Wiccan this or that, but he never in a million years would have guessed they had the power to shrink someone to Barbie size. He shuddered. What else could they do?

* * *

Dean's trip to California had not gone according to plan. He glanced over at Sam's roommate, staring off into space on his own bed, and turned back to Sam's giant face looming over him. Dean's plan had been simple: check out a reported disfigurement. A guy's face had erupted in boils in the middle of class; the sudden onset was slightly weird, but boils that spelled "LOSER" had had Dean up and running for his car, driving through the night.

"Yeah, of course I heard about it, Dean, everybody in the school's been talking about it for the past three days," Sammy said. "Aren't you usually more into, y'know, messed-up bodies and weird disappearances?"

"Yeah, so?" Dean scoffed. "There was a case: I wanted to get to the bottom of it."

"There was never any case, Dean. You think there'd be a coven at my school that I wouldn't already have checked out? They're clean, Dean. They let that dude off light for what he liked to do to girls at parties. They're not killing anybody, summoning demons, or even cheating on their test scores."

"A book full of magic spells to grant any heart's desire, who'd use it for test results?" Dean made a face.

"This is one of the top competitive schools in the country, Dean," Sam said, like Dean needed his face rubbed in _that_ more. "Everybody obsesses over grades."

Dean bit down on the first couple responses that came to mind. "Yeah, well, I don't trust witches as far as I can fly on a broomstick," he said finally. "They just had the spell to miniaturize me at their fingertips for no reason? Two revenge curses in a week, Sammy. I think this calls for a full-blown investigation."

"So you want to call Dad in, then?" Sam crossed his arms and narrowed his eyes. He knew perfectly well Dean didn't want to call Dad in and have him probably agree with Sam that Dean had jumped the gun.

"Only if you've gotten too soft in the last six months to back me up," Dean said pointedly. "Been keeping up your training? How about that freshman fifteen, huh?"

"I'm not _fat_ ," Sam hissed, outraged. But he'd glanced down to check, hah.

"Few too many dorm dinners, Sammy?" Dean ribbed. He couldn't help it.

Sam narrowed his eyes. "Still in my growth spurt, apparently," he said, only he didn't sound mad. He sounded more — wry? "I'm taller than Dad now."

"No way," Dean said automatically, but he was already reassessing. The dorm room's scale was cramped and he couldn't use himself for reference, for obvious reasons. But Sam did look lankier than usual, and his knees kept banging the desk Dean was standing on.

"So yeah, Dean, I can back you up just fine," Sam was saying. "I could take out that whole coven by myself if I needed to. Which I don't, because they're _fine._ "

At least Dean had successfully distracted him from any more talk about calling in Dad, which had been his goal. "What about your roomie over there?" he asked. "Is he going to be okay with 'The Truth is Out There?'"

"Brady?" Sam glanced over to where Brady was now lying flat on his back, staring blankly at the ceiling. "I think so?"

"Huh." Dean kicked absently at Sam's pencil.

"Just… maybe leave out the part where you want to kill all the witches, Dean?" Sam asked.

"How else are you gonna make 'em stop doing magic?" Dean reasoned. "They hurt people with their voodoo crap, they die. Only way to be sure."

"Are you really hurt? Or just embarrassed and pissed off?" Sam raised an eyebrow. Damn kid always knew Dean way too well. He knew just how to drive a question into a weak spot, too.

"I got nothing to be embarrassed about," Dean scowled. "Just doing my job."

"Yeah, we'll see," Sam said.

* * *

Drew was worried. He'd spent all day searching, searching - they all had. The night before - after the big man with a machete had been found spying on them and then tried to free Skyler, who sensibly screamed when he started hacking at the ropes holding her in place for the ritual - the whole coven had panicked. It had taken most of them dogpiling on top of the guy just to keep him pinned, and every time they thought they'd gotten his weapon away, he'd pull another one out of his clothes somewhere. It wasn't fair. They hadn't had any clothes, or weapons, or the kind of martial arts training the guy obviously did. Even though they were thirteen to one, it'd been all they could do to keep him from wriggling over to one of the weapons they'd already taken away from him.

Okay, so maybe they hadn't come up with a great plan. But all they'd wanted was to make the scary man more - _manageable,_ so that they could have time to think and talk it over and come up with a _better_ plan. And the first spell that was remotely applicable, flipping through the book? And that wasn't too advanced for them, especially in a hurry?

Shrinking the strange invader had seemed like such a perfect idea at the time.

Only the ropes they'd used to keep him in place for the spell hadn't shrunk with him, although his clothes had. Magic wasn't always what you wanted, Drew was learning. And the stranger wasted no time getting to his feet, zigzagging his way through them and disappearing into the night. Only Beth had even been able to grab at him, and she was howling that the bastard had broken her finger while Felicity screamed at her that she still shouldn't have let go.

They'd searched the room exhaustively for the first hour, and then reluctantly concluded he must have gotten out into the world somehow without them seeing. The more they talked it over, the more worried they got: he was so little, and there were so many things out there that could easily kill a person that tiny, from cats and even the smallest dogs to people unwarily opening doors or running him over. They'd panicked, but they hadn't wanted him _dead_.

And even if he didn't get hurt - he'd seemed pretty capable of taking care of himself - what was going to happen as soon as people _saw_ him? He'd be a giant neon sign flashing "Magic! Magic!"

Drew didn't even want to imagine what would happen if the world found out that parties unknown at Stanford had magically shrunk a man. It would be chaos. People might even start up witch-hunts like they did hundreds of years ago.

Worse than that, though - his coven didn't know much about them, but you couldn't study and practice magic without learning there were some really, really dark things out there. And the kinds of things _they_ might decide to do if it looked like some clumsy noobs had pretty much blown the secret of magic's existence wide open to the world...

Well, those ideas didn't bear thinking about. Drew just knew they _had_ to find the little man before anyone else did.

He'd been crisscrossing the quad for hours, peering under bushes, quizzing everybody he saw. "Have you seen anything about this long, fast, and dark? I'm looking for a ferret," he'd add, when all he got were blank looks.

It had started to seem hopeless a long time ago, but what could he do but keep at it? The others were sending updates via group text, and at sunrise and again after noon they all swapped search sectors so they weren't re-covering the same ground. But the sun was nearly setting when he finally had a lucky break.

"I saw something weird crawling up the outside of a building earlier," a guy told him, bushy eyebrows furrowed. "Didn't think it was a ferret, though."

"Oh, thank God," Drew breathed, forgetting he wasn't into God anymore. "Can you tell me where, exactly?"

* * *

That was how Drew had found himself sneaking into a residential dorm that wasn't his. It turned out to be pretty easy because people held doors for each other all the time despite dreary security signs saying not to. Up to the third floor and down the hall to the room belonging to the window that the bushy-eyebrowed student had helpfully pointed out to him… He took a moment on the stairs to inform the group chat of his lead, because anything was likely when magic was involved, and if he really had found their quarry at last, everybody should know. Just in case anything happened. He'd seen way too many movies.

What could he possibly say, if there was anybody in the room? "Hello, I need to search this place for a tiny runaway man?" Maybe he should have come prepared with a pest control uniform. "There have been rats observed in this building, I'm afraid we have to do a thorough sweep…" Could he pull it off without a uniform? "Hey, I'm Finn from down the hall, I thought I saw a rat. Have you seen any rodents?"

He took a deep breath and knocked. He heard movement and a couple mutters from inside while he waited, jittering on his toes. Then the door opened and a shaggy-haired, normal-looking guy poked his head out. "Hello?"

"Hi, I'm Finn from down the hall," he said. He had to crane his neck; the guy was tall. "My girlfriend's been freaking out because she thinks she saw a rat a few hours ago, and I told her it was silly, nobody else has rats around here, but long story short I'm checking anyway. You haven't seen any rats, have you?"

Drew rocked back on his heels at the stare he got. Piercing, like this guy not only knew he was lying, he also knew every little detail why, the whole sorry, sordid, crazy story, and he didn't think much of Drew's part in it. Drew was just about to turn tail and flee when the guy relaxed and smiled. "I haven't really been looking for rats, I've been studying. Do you want to come in and see for yourself?"

Drew couldn't believe that had actually worked. He'd been forming and discarding wild ideas for sneaking in if it was empty, or maybe if the guy was acting like he was hiding something, then Drew would know something was up, and he could get the rest of the coven and they could break down the door or something.

The guy was stepping back, casually turning away from the door, and Drew hurried in before he thought better of it.

Maybe he should have thought better of entering. Maybe the tall guy's invitation had been a little too convenient. But the door _snicked_ closed behind him quickly.

"So what _really_ brings you here?" the guy asked him, arms folded. "And don't repeat that bullshit story."

"I...I...Looking for, um, something small…" He gestured incoherently, hands held apart in the ferret-measuring gesture he'd been using all day.

"Congratulations, you found him," a little voice said. "This guy's one of the witches, Sam."

The little man from last night was standing on the desk on the clean side of the room, not trying to hide at all. There was another — full-sized — guy sitting on the other bed looking freaked out, but the guy who'd invited him in didn't look freaked at all.

"I figured," he - Sam - said, "but I wanted to see what he had to say for himself."

Drew gulped. Instead of thirteen against one, or a normal-sized human against a tiny one, now he was the one outmassed. Tall guy was skinny, but he had more muscle than Drew did, and he held himself like he knew how to throw it. If the door had still been open, Drew would have backed out and run for it.

But 'Sam' had closed it on him. "Please, we're just trying to fix what we did," he begged. "We panicked, but we can undo it."

"Panicked." Sam raised his eyebrows.

"Yeah, they were pretty panicky," the miniaturized stranger corroborated.

"Maybe don't cast magic when you're panicking," Sam frowned. "How many of you are out looking right now?"

"All of us," Drew said, surprised. "Of course we want to find him before anything bad happens."

"That's something." Sam said. He didn't ask how many all of them was. The tiny man had probably told him earlier. "Are there others on their way here?"

Drew was too frozen to decide what he should answer. If these guys knew to expect the rest of the coven, they could run and disappear before they got here, and this time probably never be found. But if Drew told them no one was coming after them, would he be safe? Or would they not let him go, maybe try to hurt him so he'd tell them how to undo the spell?

"What, did you get a message off that you were here?" the shrunken invader asked.  
The frozen indecision on Drew's face was enough answer for him. "Yeah, you did. They're coming, and soon."

"Oh my god," the third guy, the one freaking out on the bed, said faintly. "I did not sign up for getting cursed today."

"You're not going to get cursed, Brady," Sam said. How could he be so _confident?_ "You'll be fine. Just stay back out of the way, let me and Dean handle this."

"What do you mean, _handle_?" Brady said. "A bunch of witches with actual magic are about to invade our room, and you're not worried?"

Sam had hauled his old duffle out from under the bed, and was digging through it. "No," Sam said as he came up with a huge, wicked-looking knife. He opened his desk drawer, got out an antique silver letter-opener, and tossed it to the little man's — Dean's — feet. Dean scooped it up with a vicious grin and tested the edge with a thumb. "At least you've kept it sharp," he said, hefting the weight and finishing by twirling it in the air. Drew remembered with a gulp that all thirteen of them together hadn't been able to keep the man down for more than five minutes. He'd thought Sam was normal at first, but now? Sam and Dean obviously knew each other well. Were they both members of a secret fighting cult or something?

But the third guy, Brady, seemed just as taken aback by Sam's giant knife as Drew did. "Sam?"

"I'd give you one, but honestly it's better if we can resolve this through talking," Sam said. "Right, Dean?"

"They weren't into talking last night," Dean said a little sullenly. "Just attacked me as soon as they saw me."

"You were spying on us!" Drew said. "With a machete! And you pulled a _gun_ as soon as we noticed you!" His heart beat faster just remembering. "Guns aren't even allowed on campus, do you have any idea how many people die from accidental gunshots every year?"

"Do you have any idea how many people die from assholes with magic they shouldn't be messing with every year?" Dean shot back. "Trust me, if I'd shot you, it wouldn't have been _accidental_."

"Dean," Sam interrupted sharply. "Can we try to _de_ -escalate here, please? Or is that too much to ask?"

"Well, I'm sorry for rudely interrupting your study hour with my minor issues, here," Dean said. "I probably shouldn't have bothered you, I should have known you wouldn't care that they _shrunk me_ …"

And just then the door flew open with a crash and five of Drew's coven piled into the room all at once, crying out when they saw Dean standing on the table, holding his letter-opener ready. Sandy rushed forward to try and grab the little man they'd spent the last twenty hours looking for.

Drew had a terrible sinking feeling that only intensified when he felt Sam yanking him backwards by the neck.

"Don't touch him," Sam's voice filled the room, quick and commanding. His arm was around Drew's throat and his giant-ass curved knife thing was nearly touching his skin. "Or your friend here dies."

The witches all froze, Sandy with his hand still outstretched a foot away from Dean. Drew whimpered; he didn't want to die. And here he'd thought Sam was a relatively nice guy.

"Now, if you all want to resolve this peacefully," Sam continued, voice freakishly calm, "why don't we all sit down on the floor and talk things over. No grabbing, no stabbing," his eyes flicked to Dean, "and no spells until we're done hashing this out."

Sandy sat first, dropped right where he was, and one by one the others followed suit. After all of them had their butts on the carpet, Sam let go of Drew, who scuttled away from him until he bumped into the closed-again door and huddled there.

Even Brady, off to the side, had edged himself gingerly off the bed onto the floor. He was staring as wide-eyed at Sam as any of the witches.

Sam waited a beat while they all settled, eyes on him, and then he sat down on the floor too, giant wicked knife held casually across his lap. He flicked his eyes up at Dean and Dean huffed at him but sat down too, laying his letter-opener down without taking his hand off it.

"Right," Sam said. "There's been a lot of misguided hastiness so far, it seems, so we're going to go over it all carefully and without anybody doing anything regrettable. Any objections?"

A pin could have been heard falling in the room.

"Good," Sam continued. "Now, my brother wants to get unshrunk and continue peacefully on his way. You all want to not have a tiny man wandering around as evidence of your magic. You probably also want us to promise not to say anything about said magic. Are those your major concerns?"

The witches exchanged a few cautious looks and mutters while Sam waited, patiently unconcerned. Finally Sandy piped up. "Well, uh, but why was he spying on us with a machete and a gun in the first place?"

"I understand why that would be concerning to you," Sam said gravely. "Dean?"

The tiny figure sitting cross-legged on the edge of Sam's desk — just higher than head height for all of them, now — looked irritated to be asked, but grudgingly explained, "I caught a report of what you guys did to that guys face. Wanted to make sure you weren't hurting anybody else with your spells." He crossed his arms and scowled at them all.

"You nearly stabbed Skyler when she was tied up!" Jeannelle accused. "She was terrified of you!"

"It looked like you were all set to human sacrifice her, I had to do something!" Dean argued. "Your spellbook was all pictures of people getting gruesomely butchered for spells."

"You thought…" Sandy looked, if anything, even more horrified. "This is the twenty-first century, we're not _barbarians!_ "

Drew hugged his knees. His coven were all looking various degrees of nauseated at what Dean was accusing them of. But if that was really what he'd thought, and he'd come in with a gun and a machete to try and stop them… "Does anybody really still try and do stuff like that?"

"You'd be surprised what people can be capable of," Sam said, very gently. "Fortunately, that kind of evil in people is pretty rare." He was staring at Dean very pointedly.

"If I apologize for thinking you might hurt the person _tied up on your satanic altar_ , will you please undo the curse you put on me?" Dean said, grinding his teeth a little.

Sam nodded and turned to stare pointedly at Drew.

"Uh… yeah, of course," Drew said. "We'll have to talk to the rest of the coven, but that shouldn't be a problem. Right?" He looked at Sandy and Jeanelle.

"Of course we'll undo it!" Jeanelle said. "It was never meant to be for very long anyway, we just couldn't _think_ with you all… angry, and violent…"

"And large," Sandy agreed. "We've been looking for you all night and day so we can take it off!"

That might be stretching the truth a little bit, since it implied that they'd had a clear plan for what to do when they found him, but under the circumstances nobody was arguing with it. The rest of the coven was nodding earnestly, and Sam and Dean, if they were skeptical, kept it to themselves. Their friend Brady wasn't saying a word, just observing everything wide-eyed.

"Okay, great. How soon can you get it done?" Sam asked.

Sandy and Jeanelle exchanged glances. "Getting the whole group together will take the longest," Jeanelle said.

"We don't need any ingredients we don't have," Sandy agreed. "If we can get everybody back down to our … room by sunset, we can do it then. Otherwise, at midnight?"

"Dean, you remember how to get to their meeting space?"

Dean nodded, arms still crossed.

"Good. I'll want to see the spell you're using, of course," Sam said matter-of-factly. "Just to make sure you don't try and cast something else. You understand."

No lawyer could have been more businesslike. Drew wondered what he was in college for. "We can show you the book," Drew said. "But it's in Latin."

"That's fine," Sam said. "I read Latin."

Oh. "Seriously?" Drew said. His voice had a whiny tone to it, he noticed. "Who _are_ you guys?"

"People who won't tell anyone about what your coven did, if you're lucky," Dean said, trying to be intimidating even though any one of them could have picked him up and thrown him with one hand.

He still _was_ intimidating, more so the more time Drew spent in his vicinity. He wasn't getting less mysterious. Every question Drew had answered only sparked two new ones. Drew gave up on wanting to get control back somehow, and instead focused on wanting to get this over with so he'd never have to see either of these guys again. "Should I start calling the others and letting them know to meet us there?"

"Yeah, that would be good," Sam said. "Where we can hear you, please. No texting."

One or two of the coven who'd been surreptitiously digging their phones out sighed and stopped, apparently resigned to doing what Sam said now. Drew pulled out his own phone and made sure Sam could see the screen as he pulled up phone numbers.

But he'd barely started calling when somebody pounded on the door. Dean said, "Oh, for fuck's sake," as he leapt across to Sam's bed and hid under his pillow.

Sam went to open the door. "Thanks for knocking," he said, dry as dust. "Hey, Frederick. Everybody, this is Frederick, he's our RA."

"Hey, Sam," the new guy said. He was a little wide-eyed as he took in the assemblage of people in the apartment. "Brady, you doing okay?"

Brady coughed. "Yeah, I'm...sure. I'm okay."

"What's up?" Sam asked Frederick, gently redirecting his attention from Brady.

Frederick the RA's eyes lingered on Brady for a second, plainly seeing he was freaked about something, but he allowed Sam to distract him. "Hey, yeah, there's a whole bunch of people downstairs who seemed to be trying to get up to your room kinda urgently, and I came up to ask you if you knew them?"

Drew and the rest of his coven were mostly frozen in place. It had to be more of their people downstairs, caught trying to invade a dorm building that wasn't theirs en masse.

"Yes, it's fine, I know who they are," Sam said. "But it's getting crowded up here, and we were just talking about going somewhere with more room. Can you tell them all to meet up back at the regular place, and we'll see them there in an hour?"

"Sure thing, Sam," Frederick said, looking relieved. "I'm glad you're not partying in here. There're still people trying to study, even though it's a Friday. Everyone will appreciate the quiet."

"Yeah," Sam said, casting a wistful glance over at his desk. "I hate interrupting study time. Especially when it's for crap that was totally avoidable."

Drew wilted into the floor a little bit more, even as Frederick gave a confused, "Right… well then, see you," and left.

Sam shut the door behind him with finality. "Are they going to listen?" he asked the room at large, then shook his head. "Dean, it's safe."

Dean popped out from behind the pillow. "They're going to run right over your poor hall monitor on their way here, you'll be lucky if he slows them down long enough to listen to the message."

"Yeah, all right, fine," Sam sighed. "Maybe we'd better not be here by the time they make it up the stairs."

"How?" Brady asked. "They'll be able to keep an eye on both the elevator and the staircase, we can't sneak out past them."

"Brady, we've agreed on where and when to meet them," Sam said. "These guys know the plan. We're not sneaking. We're just going to take the most direct route there as fast as possible." He wasn't wasting time while he talked; he'd been digging back into his duffle, and now he came up with a knotty rope bundle. He crossed the room, opened the window, and threw it out, keeping pair of sturdy metal hooks on the window frame while the bundle unwound down the side of the building.

"Rope ladder," Dean observed. "Nice. Would have come in handy on the way up."

"You didn't tell me you'd be in the area," Sam said, shooting him a smile.

"What about the rest of us?" Drew finally scraped up the courage to ask, and Sam and Dean both looked at him surprised. Brady looked like he was wondering, too.

"Whatever you need to get the spell ready," Sam said. "Tell your friends which way we're going, that's fine. I already told Frederick to tell them where to meet us. You can follow, if you want, but with more than one person at a time on the rope ladder, the sill might not hold up under the weight." He shrugged, as though it was of little concern to him if they fell three stories out of his window. "Brady, grab my backpack and let Dean ride in it. I'll go down last."

Brady, no matter how freaked out he was, could at least follow clear instructions. In no time he was carefully climbing out the window with Sam's pack from under the bed securely on both shoulders, Dean up to his chest in one of the pockets, wrapped in Brady's scarf and still clutching his letter-opener. "Go fast," Sam told him, and turned to keep his eye on the rest of the room.

Drew's fellow witches weren't exactly happy about watching their quarry disappearing out the window, but they were also too thoroughly cowed by Sam to put up a fuss about it. Drew wondered if Sam had his own magic that let him order a roomful of witches around, or if he was just naturally that terrifying.

It was only a minute or two before a yell came up from the ground outside, and Sam checked and gave a thumbs-up. "Don't forget to bring your spellbook," he told them, then grinned and started swiftly shimmying down the ladder. Drew got up as soon as he was safely out of sight and crowded around the window with the others, but Sam was skipping two rope steps with his long legs for each one he actually put a foot on. When the rest of the coven finally barged into the room, it was only to see Sam and Brady loping across the quad and disappearing into the never-ending streams of students that flowed like blood through the veins of the campus.

"Why aren't you going after them!" Felicity said, too loud and too late.

"We might as well take the stairs," Sandy said, so Drew didn't have to. "We're not going to catch them climbing out the window."

"We can't just let them get away!" Beth argued. "We'll never see them again!"

"I think they really will meet us where they said," Drew said quietly. "And I think we should take the curse off Dean and not try to trap them." He wasn't usually who the coven listened to, but he'd had longer to get the measure of Sam and his brother than the others, and he knew what being outclassed looked like.

"Shut up, we just need to get them under control, find out what they know, and make sure they don't ever tell anyone." Felicity poked Drew in the chest, then whirled and stomped out the door. Beth was right on her heels, with most of the other witches.

Who was Drew kidding? He'd been thinking of witches as powerful, knowledgeable, even wise. But they were just a bunch of scared kids, really, when it came down to it. He looked around at the few who hadn't followed right away. They were looking at him… expectantly.

"I guess we better go try and minimize the damage," Drew said. "If we're really lucky, maybe nobody will get killed." He rubbed his neck, where he could still feel the nerve imprint of Sam's knife pressing. Sandy and Skylar and a few others, mostly who'd been in the room, followed him out the door.

They had an appointment in an hour. It was better to be early, but best of all to be prepared.

* * *

Dean put up with being jounced a lot by Brady's not-so-smooth running, at least until Sam caught up to them and Dean could demand to be transferred.

"Shh, there's people around now, you gotta stay down," Sammy said, glancing around nervously. "Just stay put for now; you wouldn't like riding in the duffle anyway."

Dean stewed. Sam didn't want to be burdened with his brother, even when his brother weighed all of a pound. "I thought you were convinced _talking_ was going to solve everything," he snarked. "So why are we running?"

"Strategic allocation of resources," Sam said, snottily. He didn't bother explaining the plan to Dean, though, because they both knew Dean understood the plan and was just giving Sam grief. "Brady, we're going to find a safe place for you to stay while we finish negotiating with the coven and get Dean back to normal, okay?"

"Are you sure? Won't you be really outnumbered?" Brady looked concerned, but there had been a flash of relief there, too.

"It's not about numbers," Sam said.

"It's about leverage," Dean finished.

"I'm going to write down our dad's number for you, Brady. And a few other guys — people who know their way around this kind of situation. If Dean and I aren't back to you by morning, you're going to call them until someone answers and then you're going to explain everything you know about what's happened. I'll write down the names of the witches I know, too — and anything Dean knows about them. Can you do that?"

Brady was obviously still freaking out, but he gulped and nodded. "That's smart. But…it's just in case, right? You'll probably get back fine?"

"Probably." Sam grinned at him. "I know a safe place you can hang for the night. Don't worry."

"Of course you do," Brady muttered. "Right. Because not worrying is totally an option here."

"If you're alive to worry, it's been a good day so far," Dean said, probably misquoting something. He gauged the distance, hauled himself out of the backpack pocket, and flung himself through the air to land clutching Sam's shirt. Sam sighed and guided him up to sit on his shoulder. There were fewer people round them now, and anyways he could almost hide in Sam's hair, with how long he'd let it grow.

* * *

They got Brady settled at Sam's safe-house - well, safe hidey-hole, houses were way beyond Sam's budget - with a handwritten sheet of paper for phone numbers and the names of a good two-thirds of the coven. They left Sam's weapons duffle with him, minus what Sam could stash around his person, which was a lot. Sam may not have liked hunter lessons, but he'd learned them.

Then, with Dean standing once more in the backpack, this time on Sam's back, they went to meet the witches.

Dean gave directions to find the basement where he'd discovered the coven practicing their forbidden rites a mere twenty-four hours before. They were still more than half an hour early, but they didn't have long to wait before the first batch of witches arrived. They were led by a couple of angry-looking girls and they stormed in so loudly that they didn't even notice Sam leaning against the wall, at first, much less Dean, who was hiding up on a light fixture. He figured he could leap down onto somebody's head with his makeshift polearm, if necessary, without hurting himself, because he was so much lighter now. The same muscle power got him a lot further. It felt awesome, like being Superman, except when he had to look up at yet another person's nose hairs. Then he remembered that what felt like super-strength would maybe let him pick up a lunchbox, if he could manage to get his arms around it.

It sucked. Witches sucked. Dean wanted a nice simple monster he could kill, but Sammy was right, damn him. He shouldn't just kill these witches even if they had cursed him.

Though they were currently not endearing themselves to anybody. The ringleaders were arguing stridently with Sammy, trying to get him to say where Dean was.

They'd have had better luck bullying a slab of rock. "I'm sorry, I'm just here early to make sure," Sam was saying earnestly. "Do you have everything you need to take the spell off?"

"Everything except the subject of the initial casting," the blonde one said, teeth gritting. "We really need to find him before we go any further."

"Oh, he'll be along in time, don't worry," Sam said. "I guess we'll just wait then." He stretched elaborately, looking around.

"You — you have no idea what we could do to you," another witch threatened, plainly incredulous that Sam wasn't cowering before the prospect of half a coven of pissed-off witches. "You'd better tell us now, or else we'll… we'll…"

"You'll what, exactly?" Sam asked. "Think very carefully about what you want to threaten me with."

"We'll shrink you just like your brother!" she exclaimed.

"Yeah, because that worked out so well for you guys last night," Sam rolled his eyes. "Where's your spellbook, anyway? Don't you need it to cast spells?"

A few of the witches in the back exchanged uneasy looks. Had they seriously freaking forgotten to bring their spellbook? Dean couldn't believe it. What were they planning to do, tie Sam up and beat Dean's location out of him?

"How were you planning to undo Dean's curse when you didn't even bring your spellbook?" Sam asked, brows furrowing. "I'm here in good faith as agreed with the other members of your coven, but I'm beginning to think that you don't intend to abide by that agreement at all."

"How dare you call us dishonest," the blonde one hissed. "When we were the ones with our meeting place invaded and spied on, weapons brought into our sanctuary…"

"You used magic as a weapon on a normal human first," Sam said calmly. "Did you think no one would investigate what had been going on here?"

The witches stirred and murmured. Plainly, they _had_ thought that no one would investigate, but they weren't willing to admit that now. "He can't expect us to undo the spell without having him in front of us," the threatening one said finally, but she had lost a little of her former certainty.

"Of course not," Sam said, all business. "He's just waiting for us to come to an understanding."

"An understanding," Blondie repeated dubiously.

"For example, we wanted you to understand that if we don't return intact from this meeting, our friend will tell other hunters. They'll come here, they'll find each and every one of you, and they won't be nearly as nice as we are," Sam said lightly. "They won't give up or stop until they're sure that you'll never be a threat to anyone else, ever again." He paused to let that sink in, holding their eyes in turn.

Then he smiled. "But threats are no way to get along with people. Let's talk about how we'd like tonight to go, instead. We are prepared to keep completely silent about everything we've seen here, on the minor condition that Dean gets restored to normal. With your full coven here, it should be well within your collective ability, of course."

"Of course we _can,_ ," the threatening one said. "The question is, why don't we just keep you here and torture you until you're as cooperative as we want you to be?"

Dean sucked in a breath. He wondered if he could leap far enough to land on her head and stab her in the eye. Most of the rest of these kids were sheep, scared and more than ready to roll over after Sam's speech, but this girl was a real piece of work.

But Sam just laughed. "Yeah, that and two dollars will buy you a coffee," he said. "Do what you want. Torture, kidnap, kill me… it will only bring trouble like you've never seen down on yourselves. None of it will make me give up my brother to you. The only way that happens is if we have an agreement."

Dean felt his heart swelling as he looked down at his brother, shoulders thrown back, facing down half a coven of witches. For Dean. Dean hadn't known — after the fight, the really bad one before Sam left forever, Dean hadn't been sure Sam would still go to bat for him. He'd come down to California anyway at the first hint of trouble, but he'd more than half expected to have to solve the entire case on his own while Sam whined and grudgingly put up with Dean intruding into his new life.

But no. Dean might have preferred if Sam wanted to go out and slaughter the entire coven for what they'd done to Dean, but Dean could also admit when his way wasn't the best way. And at the end of the day, Sam was willing to fight for him, bleed for him and die for him.

Sam did still love him, after all.

Dean made a face and wondered if mushy thinking was a side effect of the curse that he just hadn't noticed till now. The sooner he was back to normal, the better.

"All right," the blonde witch said slowly. "So we take the spell off, you and your friends say nothing, ever, about this, and we all leave peacefully, that's the deal you're offering?"

Sam nodded. "Seems reasonable."

"I think we can agree to that," the blonde one said, and her friend who'd threatened torture looked sullen but shrugged, giving up.

"But we forgot to bring the spellbook," one of the witches in the back whimpered. "It's only ten minutes to sundown, how are we going to do the counter-spell without it?"

Nobody seemed to have an answer for her, until a voice rang out from the door. "It's okay, we brought it," Drew said, at the head of the other half of the coven.

Drew. Dean shook his head. Would wonders never cease.

"Alright, let's see it," Sam said briskly. "We haven't got much time to make it work."

* * *

Brady was too unsettled to actually fall asleep on the surprisingly comfortable couch in the abandoned office that Sam mysteriously had a key to. The events of the past couple hours kept flashing through his mind; it felt like he'd fallen into an alternate universe where everyone around him thought magic was normal. Only it was his reality after all, and magic had been right under the surface all along. Hidden.

And Sam had grown up right in the thick of it. That much was obvious. The fact that there was a coven of real witches at Stanford was less shocking than finding out the guy he'd been living with for the past six months, despite the careful appearance of ordinariness he gave off, didn't hesitate to go toe-to-toe with them. Sam had held a knife to that guy's neck with an icy casualness that made Brady shudder every time he thought about it.

His roommate was scarier than he'd thought. But was that because Sam wasn't who he pretended? Or, worse, was it necessary? Was it because the world was a much meaner, scarier place than Brady had always thought, a world where magic killed without warning?

If they didn't come back, and Brady had to call the numbers they'd left him, would their dad be able to save them and bring them back, normal-sized or even alive? Just how badly could their negotiations go? Brady was sure he didn't really want to know, but he couldn't stop thinking about it.

Fortunately, it wasn't even half an hour after sunset before he heard Sam's rhythm-coded knock on the door. Brady sprang up to shove the desk away from where he'd had it barricading himself in and unlocked the door for them.

Dean was a full-sized human, walking behind Sam and barely a couple inches shorter than him. With a full, up-close view, he was way more attractive than Brady had been giving him credit for. Sam and Dean both obviously had very unfair genetic advantages.

"...I can't believe they made me _drink_ that shit," Dean was complaining as they came in the door. "Witches. Putting all sorts of unhygienic crap in their potions, like anybody wants to have to drink anybody else's bodily fluids. They're all freaks, Sammy, I'm telling you…"

"At least it was only tears, and not anything worse," Sam said philosophically, but Brady could tell he was trying not to smile. "Tears of true regret are a very powerful curse-breaking reagent."

"It's _disgusting_ ," Dean said with conviction. "I never would've apologized for spying on them if I'd realized they were going to make me drink that."

"I'm glad you made it back okay," Brady said, holding out his hand to shake.

Instead of shaking it, Dean dropped Brady's scarf back onto his hand and forearm. "Thanks for the loan," he said gruffly. "Even if you run like a kangaroo."

Brady blinked. "You're a bit of an ass, you know that, right?"

Dean did have an awful rakish grin. "I know."

Brady wondered if he was trying to quote Star Wars. He shook his head and turned to Sam. "Everything went okay, then? You didn't have to sell your first-born child or anything?"

Sam gave him a tired smile. "Right according to plan," he said. "Thanks for not freaking out tonight, Brady."

Brady laughed incredulously. "Not freaking out? I've been in full-on freak-out mode for the past two hours, man, I don't know what you're thanking me for."

"Even if you were freaking out, you were still functional," Sam said. "You still followed instructions and didn't try to go off-script."

Dean nodded, looking serious for once. "Things could have gone sideways at any point, but having you there and not going off the rails made it easier." He held out a hand, apparently oblivious to having not shaken Brady's a minute ago.

Brady was bemused, but he shook it. "You really make a habit of looking for - for that stuff?" he asked.

"Gotta make life exciting somehow," Dean grinned. "But I guess - If Sam's really set on staying here - I guess it's okay if you keep rooming with him. You're not likely to be stupid enough to get him killed." He eyed Brady a little skeptically, nodded decisively to himself, and tossed Sam a sloppy second cousin to a salute before he turned on his heel and headed for the door.

"Dean." Sam's exasperated voice stopped him in his tracks. "You're not leaving yet."

"It's okay, Sam. I think he was trying to say something nice," Brady said.

"He's never said anything half as approving to any of my other friends, ever," Sam said. "Consider yourself the cream of the crop." He stalked towards Dean and put a hand on his shoulder. "You're not leaving without a hug."

Brady had to look away, after a moment. Much as they ribbed and needled each other, there was no doubt how much Sam and his brother cared about each other, too.

* * *

Sam had managed to convince Dean to stay the night with them, but he was gone in the morning. They never lingered in town after the job was done, an old and iron-clad habit. Dean lived and breathed the hunter lifestyle and claimed his feet started itching if he was in one place too long.

Sam didn't try to hold him. He'd given up hunting, but he understood its pull. His greatest fear had been that Dean wouldn't want to let him go once they were working together again. But something had changed after the confrontation with the witches in their basement; it was like something had settled in Dean. Whatever question he'd needed answered badly enough to drive all night to California for a case of boils had been answered. And suddenly he was willing to let Sam have his own life, approving of Sam's roommate, even. Sam shook his head. Wonders never ceased.

Sam put away the bedroll Dean had used and settled down at his desk, the scant lines of his essay from yesterday still resting on the surface. He should have plenty of time to get it finished today.

Unless something else came up. Sam was a Winchester, and anything was possible.


End file.
